Pinterest Good Practice

Pinterest is a great tool for business. Not only is it full of amazing inspiration and ideas, you can use it to gain clarity on a specific project, create brand mood boards and even use it to ‘file’ your content. It’s also an amazing marketing tool, and you needn’t spend a penny if you don’t want to.

Pinterest content, or ‘pins’ are evergreen - which means once you put it out there on the internet it stays there forever, doing it’s thing and working really hard for you. Unlike other forms of content, such as Instagram stories/photos or newsletters, the amount of work required is relatively minimal and if it goes ‘viral’ it can bring a lot of traffic to your site.

As you can probably tell, I am an advocate for using Pinterest to boost your business. So I’ve put together some pieces of advice I’ve learned over the years to help make Pinterest work for you.

your profile

First of all you will need to set up a business account (which is free by the way). This gives you access to statistics on how your pins are performing, and also gives you the option to pay for advertising. I’ve not personally paid for an ad before; however I have been told that if this is something you want to do, the best pins to advertise are the ones that are performing well anyway (and that lead to your own site of course).

Make sure you have ‘claimed’ all of your other platforms - your website, Etsy, Instagram - on the ‘edit profile’ section. This will allow you to see who else is pinning your content, and direct them to your profile if they pin from elsewhere.

Make sure you have a clear photo and brand name.

For an extra chance of being found through the search function, it is good to include a tag line that features some of your brand keywords - for example mine is ‘Lois Frances Floyd // Simple, Soulful & Creative Living’.

You also have the option to add a short sentence explaining a little more about your business or what people can expect from your account. This also works well for your SEO (search engine optimisation), so try and include keywords here as well.

Your boards

It is good practice to have one board dedicated to your own work. You can still pin your work to other boards of course, but it is helpful to have one that showcases everything you’ve done for people either looking for something specific or that have just stumbled upon your account.

Utilise the ‘featured boards’ function. You can feature up to 5 boards - the first should be your own board. These then stay at the very top of your profile and will be the first boards people see.

Create other boards that will appeal to your ideal customer. Go back to your ‘customer profile’ and look at what you’ve written down as their other interests and lifestyle goals.

Also create boards that you will be able to pin your own images to. For example if you are a ceramicist, you will have a board dedicated to your own work, then you could create others such as ‘Home Decor’, ‘Kitchen’, ‘Creative Studio Space’, ‘Gifts for Mother’s Day’… the more boards you can create that will have your images in them, the better the chance of someone finding and re-pinning your work.

Boards should have a clear title. So instead of ‘nom nom’ write something like ‘vegan recipes’. This ensures that your boards are included in searches, as people tend to use clear descriptive words when searching for something specific.

Board descriptions should start with a conversational sentence. Something short and written in your brand voice. Then you can go on to include lots of keywords - things that people may type in to the search bar to find what is in your board.

To find the most relevant keywords, go to the search function on the main page and start typing - search terms start being automatically populated from what you enter. The most relevant and popular searched for terms appear at the top of the list. You can then use these terms in your own boards, pins and descriptions to maximise your chances of being found.

group boards

A group board is a board set up with more than one member that can pin to it. Many people set up group boards as a way to share and cross-post content.

Being active in group boards is a great way of growing your pins quickly and organically. Each board will have it’s own rules and etiquette, so make sure you read the board description before you request to join one.

You can find group boards by searching for boards in the search function, or there is also a website called ‘Pin Groupie’ that lists lots of popular, active and niche boards that may be open to join.

Tailwind is another tool many people use to help share content across other people’s platforms. It has lots of free features, including the option to join ‘tribes’ - where you can add your content to a group and people within that group will pin it to their own boards. It also offers a scheduling service, that automates pins so that you can remain active on Pinterest (Pinterest rewards people that are active users, much like Instagram).

things to consider

Pinterest rewards active users, so try and pin regularly - daily if possible. Consider scheduling if this feels like too much.

Original pins (things pinned directly from another site by the user) are ranked higher by Pinterest, so they are more likely to show original content to new people than something that has been re-pinned.

Adding keywords to your pins makes them more likely to be found on search. You can also add hashtags.

When pinning from Instagram the caption get’s automatically input into the description, so it is good to re-write it with just a few keywords instead.

Make it a practice to go back and re-pin old (but still relevant) content to the same board, so that it has the opportunity to be seen by new people. Think of it like a kind of stock-rotation system. Tailwind also offer this service as an automation.

Long, portrait pictures and videos work best. Pinterest is best viewed in ‘portait’ mode, and pins that are made specifically for Pinterest dimensions (or just portrait in general) can be seen better and are more likely to be re-pinned or opened up.

Many of these things take a little while to set up at first, but once the ball is rolling it needs minimal upkeep for a great return. If Pinterest is something you enjoy using anyway, it is a fun way of driving traffic to your business.